Health Counts 2024
Health and wellbeing
Brighton and Hove City Council published the Health Counts 2024 summary report and full report. These provide some of the best evidence on the population of the city and their health and wellbeing.
The Health Counts survey asks questions about people’s health, lifestyles, and overall wellbeing in Brighton and Hove. The data helps inform decisions about what services and support are needed to meet local needs and tracks how health inequalities have changed over time.
Conducted by the University of Brighton with Brighton and Hove City Council’s Public Health Team, this survey is carried out once a decade, and in 2024 was the largest health and wellbeing survey of adults ever carried out across the city.
The survey included questions on health and wellbeing topics, such as:
- General health
- Emotional wellbeing and mental health
- Falls and pain
- Alcohol and drug use
- Sexual health
- Physical activity.
As well as questions on factors covering areas that impact health and wellbeing, such as:
- Belonging
- Community safety and cohesion
- Social contact
- Housing concerns
- Harassment and violence.
For the first time, the 2024 survey also included questions on gambling-related harm, suicidal thoughts and attempts, harassment and hate crime, alongside access to nature and the natural environment and cost of living.
Downloads
User-testing conducted by Healthwatch Brighton and Hove
Healthwatch Brighton and Hove was invited to conduct user-testing for this survey in 2024.
What did we do?
We supported the University of Brighton in user-testing the survey to ensure the questions suited the diverse groups within our city. We consulted 22 people. This included people for whom English was not their first language, a range of age groups, Black and Racially Minoritised groups, people at foodbanks, and people from the travelling community.
Key things we heard:
Through wide consultation with local people and several voluntary sector organisations, questions were modified based on user feedback. We provided feedback on every page of the survey, suggesting the rewording of several questions to make them easier to understand and respond to.
What difference did this make?
The user-testing made a powerful contribution to the success of the Health Counts survey, which achieved a sample of 16,729 across Brighton and Hove, or 7.2% of the resident population aged 18 years or older. Healthwatch worked with council officials in planning the launch event of the results in June 2025 and will conduct further analysis of the data to provide detailed local insight.
Health inequalities
This survey highlights the stark health inequalities across different areas and particular communities.
While we have seen many economic, societal and lifestyle changes nationally over the last 10 years that may have impacted people’s health and wellbeing and widened inequalities, this data focuses on the local picture.
Local data informs inclusive and accessible service provision, community cohesion, promoting better health and wellbeing for all, and reducing unfair differences between those with the best and poorest health outcomes.